Critics cut rough at Cannes choices

Critics at the Cannes Film Festival are more scathing than usual at the jury choices this year.

The jury is made up of film stars and filmmakers, who obviously see far fewer films than hardened critics, who sit through hundreds a year.

This year’s Palme d’Or winner is another didactic drama by British director Kenneth Loach, who won the same prize 10 years with a similarly politically-charged film.

That film was The Wind That Shakes the Barley, which takes sides in the Irish civil war. His latest, I, Daniel Blake, is a plea for welfare reform.

Loach is capable of lightening up, as with the whisky heist in The Angel’s Share and the more recent Jimmy's Hall but this year’s winner isn’t likely to rattle the box office or the critics’ top 10 lists.

The runner-up Grand Prix winner, 27-year-old Quebeçois director Xavier Dolan’s It’s Only the End of the World, is no better. Most critics said that title aptly described their reaction.

This is Variety’s summation: “Dolan’s latest, a hysterically pitched dysfunctional family drama shot in relentless close-up, drew the worst reviews of the fest that weren’t for Sean Penn’s The Last Face, prompting dismayed reactions even from many critics who had championed his previous work.”

Slightly better received were the shared best director prize, awarded to Olivier Assayas’ ghost story starring Kirsten Stewart, Personal Shopper, and previous Palme d’Or winner Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) for Graduation, which notched up fine reviews without many critics saying it ranked alongside his best work.

Repetitive choices by juries are common at Cannes, suggesting they aren’t aware of what the critics know well – that some filmmakers keep repeating themselves.

British director Andrea Arnold’s well-received American Honey won her a third Jury Prize (for third place) out of a limited output (Red Road, Fish Tank and Wuthering Heights), while German director Maren Ade’s unconventional family comedy Toni Erdmann, which topped every critics’ poll, was ignored.

Other prizes went to Filipina Jaclyn Jose for Brillante Mendoza's Ma' Rose (best actress) and Iran's Shahab Hosseini in Asghar Farhadi's The Salesman (best actor). Farhadi, best known for A Separation, also won best screenplay. 

Oscar contenders
But Cannes isn’t just about “films in contention" – those eligible for prizes. It is also a showcase for those expected to pick up Oscar nominations later in the year.

Last year, Mad Max: Fury Road, Carol, Inside Out and Son of Saul all premiered at last year’s Cannes and went to score a boatload of Oscar nominations.

This year’s out-of-competition titles included Woody Allen’s nostalgic Café Society, set in 1930s Hollywood, and Steven Spielberg’s The BFG, based on Roald Dahl’s children’s story.

Variety’s critic, Ramin Setoodeh, was largely underwhelmed: “It’s very possible that not a single movie that screened here will snag a best picture Oscar nod.”

He cites one potential winner, Jeff Nichols’ Loving, the story of an interracial couple (played by Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga), whose fight against anti-miscegenation laws led to a groundbreaking 1967 Supreme Court ruling.

Apart from those mentioned, among others that attracted attention were Nicolas Winding Refn’s psycho-horror tale The Neon Demon, Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling as buddies in The Nice Guys, Chris Pine and Ben Foster as bank-robbing brothers in Hell or High Water, and George Clooney as a TV investment guru in Money Monster. 

New offerings from film festival regulars included Spanish director Pedro Almodovar’s Julieta, Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson, Paul Verhoeven’s Elle and Laura Poitras’ latest cyber-doco Risk about Julian Assange.

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